“Why is it February and hotter than the devil's booty‐hole outside?” So wonders Abbott Elementary principal Ava Coleman in the show’s second episode.
Showrunner Quinta Brunson told a rapt audience at last week’s Hollywood Climate Summit that this wasn’t just a throwaway laugh line. She was trying to get her audience to think about climate change in a cheeky way. “Beating them over the head with a message will make them turn the TV off,” Brunson said.
That tension — between the messages audiences want and the climate warnings they need to hear — was at the heart of the two-day summit, which brought together titans of show business at the headquarters of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, the same theater where Academy Award nominations are announced every January. In a series of panels and workshops, actors, producers, writers and showrunners debated what the industry can and should do to address climate change.
